Tom Egbers sat at the table with Khalid & Sophie last night full of sadness to talk about his controversial affair with an intern. “The conclusion is that he confirms almost everything!”
He has become the face of everything that is wrong and was at NOS Sport: broadcasting celebrity Tom Egbers. In particular, the story about his affair with an intern causes a lot of excitement, because, according to the Volkskrant, he bullied and harassed her after the breakdown of their romance. A romance that lasted three years, the presenter said yesterday Khalid & Sophia.
Dark periods
Tom’s performance at Khalid & Sophie was very unexpected. He texted host Khalid Kasem just hours before the broadcast. How it’s going? “Not good. You can imagine something about that. You sleep badly. Not actually. You are consumed with sadness about what is happening now,” said the presenter, who confesses that he is at home with the curtains closed.
To begin with, Tom confesses that he is a cheater. “I have been married for 32 years and have had some dark periods in those more than thirty years, where I was not myself, was unhappy, felt loneliness and during those periods I had a number of extramarital escapades. I am saddened by that and I have caused my family a lot of grief.”
The affair with the intern on the editorial floor of NOS Sport was one of those escapades. “It was in 2005. She was a young, talented woman and she was good, she was fun, she was witty and she was an addition to the editorial team. She was in her early twenties and I was in my forties. We clicked.”
‘She was witty’
According to Tom, they decided to drive home together from work (‘we lived 200 meters from each other’) and he went in with her. “This was not a sexual relationship. We kissed, as like-minded people. That’s ageless. It was kissing and that was it. Almost three years I think.”
Knife in the back
Tom says he cut the affair off out of guilt and he claims she couldn’t accept that. She is said to have said untruths to his wife Janke Dekker. “She said things that were so explosive and inaccurate, but also bombarded the life of my marriage. Then I exploded.”
What did Tom do? “I was really furious and seething. I went to her at the editorial office and then I said: ‘I’m never going to make a topic with you again. What you are doing now I experience as a knife in the back. This is too bad for words. You are destroying not only me, but also my family and my marriage.’”
Very sad
It is true that he repeatedly abused the intern at the editorial office, as stated in the Volkskrant. “Those are words I recognize. If someone stabs you in the back, I’ll make it clear. I did that wrong. I should not have done that and certainly not – I meant it at the time – that other colleagues became part of it.”
However, according to Tom, it is not correct that he made a finger-to-throat gesture. “I am not someone who makes death threats. I know that didn’t happen and that I never voiced that.”
Tom also denies that he ‘continued to harass’ her, that he had a position of power at the NOS and that he did not become Aïcha Marghadi’s mentor because of his reputation in the field of women. “I am very sad.”
‘He confirms everything’
Tom gets mixed reactions to his interview. Angela de Jong at Jinek: “If I peel it off completely, I cannot come to any other conclusion than that he actually confirms what is in de Volkskrant. That there was a relationship, that it ended and then an atmosphere arose in the editorial office that was not okay.”
She wonders what actually got Tom out of this. “The problem is, of course, the culture at that editorial office, and that just stood firm in this interview.”
Bullying behavior
Patty Brard, who was also a guest at Khalid & Sophie, is not impressed. She says at Shownieuws: “It is of course very strange that there is an interview in the AD on Monday with his wife who says that she is convinced that he has never shown bullying behavior, only to hear tonight that he admits that he does have bullying behavior shown.”
The men of Today Inside found the interview ‘uncomfortable’. “I wouldn’t have done it if I were him,” says René van der Gijp.